Just a quick note to let you all know that I am still around. 🙂 For the first half of this month, I was in Australia to attend the Machine Learning Summer School held at the ANU. Well, should see some action here soon when I post some photos I took on the ANU campus and also of Sydney – including shots taken while (walking not climbing) crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Holy Grail(s)
Despite the obvious religious connotations in the title, it seems the term ‘Holy Grail‘ has taken on slightly different meanings over the years, as seen from this list: List of Holy Grails. Accidentally stumbled across this list while reading about a new attempt at the Holy Grail of CSS formatting: (Geek-speak) a three-column layout with fluid centre and two fixed-width columns.
Fruit picking
Since it’s probably kind of obvious that I have been spending much time diagnosing and ensuring some stability in my Windows PC, I may as well mention that I have also been looking to get my hands on a cheap Mac system to play with. In fact, I was close to spending some money on a second-hand Mac Mini until the buyer backed out at the last minute. 😡
Anyway, here are some links (likely to add to as I find more) I have found useful while doing the research.
- MacInTouch: timely news and tips about the Apple Macintosh (the original Mac news and information site according to the site slogan and with lots of performance comparisons)
- Mike’s Mac OS X Management Software and Tips (at least there’s the Carbon Copy Cloner which allows you to have a complete, bootable backup of the hard drive)
- Think Secret – Apple Mac Insider News (full of advance announcements, so much so that Apple is seeking legal action for some news items! Update: unfortunately forced to shut down by Apple…)
- Low End Mac: How Much Mac Do You Need?
- Mac users group, Singapore (there’s a nice buy/sell section in the Forum but requires registration just to browse)
Fingers crossed
The problems (as I wrote here, here and here) I have been having lately with my PC at home seem to be finally over! Finger crossed…
My theory is that when I removed a faulty harddisk recently – the time when all subsequent instability issues seemed to have started – I had inadvertently left hanging a ground(ing) cable that was secured to the PC casing using the one of screws which secures the same harddisk. This naturally can lead to unexpected fluctuations in my system, or even burn out key components in the worst case. Two incidents seem to back this up. Two days ago, I tripped the power at my unit as I was merely plugging in the power cord of the PC. Secondly, I noticed quite by chance that the ground lead of the front panel Firewire port was touching the metal case. I have since unplugged the Firewire cable from the motherboard just in case. It just goes to show that when tinkering inside your PC, don’t leave anything hanging!! 😉
In fact, I have managed to run OCCT (apparently even more stressful than Prime95) overnight without crashing – although CPU temperature was raised to unusually high 52C. At the moment, I am putting the system through the rigours of Burnin Test. Another tool that I have used extensively over the past couple of weeks is the Ultimate Boot CD, mainly for checking the integrity of the harddisks.
So far so good. Finally I can reinstall all the softwares that I normally use!
Fearless
Saw Jet Li‘s new movie Fearless last Friday. Fearless is a story about the Chinese martial arts guru Huo Yuanjia (1869-1910), played by Li, who founded the Chin Woo (also known as Jing Wu Men) martial arts school in Shanghai in 1909.
Apart from the breathtaking fighting scenes and dedication that we have come to expect from Li, this movie to me was quite different from any of his previous movies. For a start, there was much more raw and brutal violence, but this also gave the movie a better sense of realism. After all, real fighting is not necessarily suave and pretty. In those days, it was often a matter of life and death.
While much of the movie’s plot is fiction, so what was depicted is definitely not the true life story of Huo Yuanjia, in the movie we get to see many of the vulnerable, imperfect and therefore human aspects of a hero. This is where I think Li’s Buddhist beliefs and personal life experiences are most apparent. In particular, I found the exchange over tea ceremony the most illuminating: whether a type of tea is good or bad, we as bystanders are in no position to proclaim this. Who do we think we are to be able to judge and place a label on something which we cannot know fully? Similarly, it’s unnecessary and presumptuous to rank different schools of martial arts because there are no absolute truths.
The Chinese character martial consists of two parts: stop and violence. From a gifted young man out to be the best at everything, we see the same person finally finding a purpose for his talents. To me, this is the essence of the greatness of the hero in this movie.
Various news items which are worth a read:
- Official Taiwan Website
- Official China Website (with many photos and articles)
- Mother of all links at Jet Li’s Website
- More links and gossip page
- Very long review of Fearless (Author’s interpretation of Huo’s development in martial arts can be disregarded because in my opinion, the author is reading too much into the storyline and confusing make-believe parts of the movie.)
Online calendars
Currently looking for a good online and PHP-based event calendars to use for a site I am planning. Here are some that I will keep in consideration:
Look ahead
With the coming of 2006 and the passing of the Chinese New Year (out goes the year of the chook!), it’s time to plan ahead!
Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those
things which are ahead.Philippians 3:13
Power for the needed
In the process of trying to get to the bottom of my intermittent “hanging” problems, happen to come across this useful link: Power Supply Wattage Calculator. This should allow you to have a ball-park figure of how big the Power Supply Unit needs to be if you are into building your own system.
Can't wait?
Last night, on my way home, what I observed as I was getting off the MRT (aka metro is other places) finally made me realize why many people like to say that life is tough in Singapore.
Linux: alternative OS
Recent problems with my PC running Windows XP – well, maybe not strictly an OS-related issue but also some hardware faults there as well – have once again driven me to ponder migrating to Linux once and for all. In fact, I had another error last night after a recent total reinstall due to harddisk failure: “rasapi32.dll is not a valid image…”
However, I am still reluctant to make the switch because of a heavy reliance of many, mostly open source, tools that work only on Windows, such as for video editing, disc burning, and audio compression, etc. Perhaps this is more of an deep-bred insecurity thing?? Well, I guess I will need to study The table of equivalents/replacements/analogs of Windows software in Linux. a bit more closely from now on, to see if it is possible to have the same sort of support? Yet another option is run a live CD distribution such as Knoppix or even Ubuntu.